This is pretty great. I’ll let the always-excellent ThinkProgress do the talking:
Yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) gave a foreign policy speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. He stated:
I detest war. It might not be the worst thing to befall human beings, but it is wretched beyond all description. When nations seek to resolve their differences by force of arms, a million tragedies ensue. The lives of a nation’s finest patriots are sacrificed.
Innocent people suffer and die. Commerce is disrupted; economies are damaged; strategic interests shielded by years of patient statecraft are endangered as the exigencies of war and diplomacy conflict. Not the valor with which it is fought nor the nobility of the cause it serves, can glorify war. Whatever gains are secured, it is loss the veteran remembers most keenly.
… These lines are not McCain’s own. As TP reader 5th Estate discovered, they were in fact taken largely from a 1996 speech by ret. Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer. Below is a comparison of McCain’s address yesterday with Ziemer’s in 1996:
Ziemer McCain War is awful and when nations seek to resolve their differences by fighting, a million tragedies ensue. Link When nations seek to resolve their differences by force of arms, a million tragedies ensue. Link War is wretched beyond description. Link It might not be the worst thing to befall human beings, but it is wretched beyond all description. Link Nothing, not the valor with which it is fought, nor the cause with which it serves can glorify war. Link Not the valor with which it is fought nor the nobility of the cause it serves, can glorify war. Link It’s unclear whether Ziemer is tied to the McCain campaign, but a search of both his campaign and Senate websites turned up no references to the admiral. He does, however, have ties to the Bush administration. In June 2006, Bush appointed Ziemer to head his President’s Malaria Initiative. Ziemer was also honored with a spot in First Lady Laura Bush’s box at the President’s 2007 State of the Union address.
Now, did Barack Obama borrow some words from Deval Patrick? Yup. It was a mistake, which he admitted. But Patrick is directly and heavily involved in the Obama campaign, and had expressly given Obama permission to use the words. So far, at least, there’s no indication that that’s the case for Ziemer and McCain.
Anyway, let’s see if this story gets as much MSM play as the Devack Obatrick story did.
but McCain has already ‘crossed the threshold to be Commander in Chief’, and he’s also quite patriotic. I believe that he supported the Iraq War Resolution, and his good friend Joe Lieberman (and other DLC heavies) can vouch for his integrity.
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p>McCain is beyond reproach.
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p>Obama on the hand, ‘as far as we know’, hasn’t crossed that threshold. He hasn’t taken fire so to speak. There’s really no comparison.
All the comments to that post were the best laugh I’ve had all day. I don’t know whether or not to be surprised BMG doesn’t have such a ridiculous number of inane commentators like that site apparently does, but I’m sort of glad.
They already have a correction on their site. It looks like McCain said the words first, they were later used by Ziemer, and have been used again by McCain.
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p>This kind of thing happens to old guys who’s idea of a new plan is 100 more years of the same.
1995 speech here.
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p>McCain did indeed utter these first. Or perhaps this is what Navy Cadets have drilled into their head until it becomes part of them. That is another thought.